Saturday, January 14, 2017

'Sold to the highest bidder' - how Ireland's institutions allowed Americans to adopt Irish children in the 1950s

THE DUBIOUS NATURE of the process
surrounding the adoption of Irish children by American citizens in the
1950s has come to light with the publication of foreign policy papers
dating from that decade.

The documents, which range from summaries of meetings to communiqués
between civil servants to briefing notes for ministers, show a
bureaucratic system that was entirely hands off and saw the adoption of
Irish children born outside of marriage by foreign citizens as a
fundamental ‘good’.

At that time, as many as 10 Irish children a month, the vast majority
of them born outside marriage and as a result resident in Catholic
institutions, were being adopted by Americans.

Some 330 such children
left these shores between 1950 and 1952, with such records only being
kept from the former date.

This trend was far from secret, and indeed was openly derided in the British press.

At the time the then Department of External Affairs (now Foreign
Affairs) saw its role as being purely administrative in nature – it
supplied each child with a passport, leaving the suitability or
otherwise of each potential adoptive family to the Catholic Church, in
whose institutions these illegitimate (as they were officially
described) children invariably resided.

Catholic Charities

Throughout the papers it is made clear that the adoption of Irish
children born to single parents by Americans was seen entirely as a good
thing by Ireland’s senior ministers.

Then Justice Minister, Fianna
Fáil’s Gerald Boland “favoured the sending of children to America
for adoption in suitable homes where the alternative would be life in an
institution in this country”, according to one memo from April 1954,
though it is emphasised that that viewpoint had never been stated
publicly.In fact, a major source of worry for the Department at the time was
that it would be seen as being “quite embarrassing if, in some case, a
child had to be left in this country owing to the impossibility of
issuing a passport in time” due to the short notice with which American
servicemen (based in the UK, who comprised a substantial portion of the
adopting Americans in question) were often transferred.

However, the problem of possibly granting an adoption to people who would not be able to adequately care for the child remained.

The Department of External Affairs solution to the problem of gaining
adequate prior approval for US citizens seeking to adopt in Ireland was
for those Americans to receive the blessing (via “very detailed and
comprehensive reports” into a subject’s finances and home life) of an
organisation known as the Catholic Charities prior to granting a
passport application to a child.

This institution,
which had branches across the US (and remains active to this day), was
seen as providing the most “complete vetting” of any American
individuals seeking to adopt an Irish infant.

Unfortunately, the vetting in question turned out to be less complete
than had been believed, a fact that first came to light in late 1953
when a number of children began to arrive in the Archdiocese of Chicago
without adequate pre-approval of the would-be adopting families.

Misplaced children

An interview with a Monsignor O’Grady of the Catholic Charities
organisation at the Department in Dublin in January 1956 only served to
deepen suspicions that all was not well with the vetting process.

O’Grady appears to have avoided detailed questions as to the nature
of his organisation’s US operations, before bemoaning the “irregular”
adoptions carried out by a “commercial operator” in Texas and Wisconsin
who had been making money from such adoptions, which in turn had caused
O’Grady’s organisation “grave embarrassment”.

The Monsignor then neglected to answer a question as to whether or
not that operator was in fact connected with the Catholic Charities,
before admitting that it was “true” that children were being “misplaced”
in the USA owing to “deceit” on the American side.

It subsequently emerged that the Catholic Charities was not “in fact
equipped at all its branches to deal satisfactorily with adoptions”, and
that indeed some adoptions had only proceeded when agents of the
organisation had given personal recommendations for unsuitable
candidates in lieu of an in-depth vetting process.

A subsequent memo between Dublin and the Irish embassy in Chicago
indicated the poor impression the Monsignor had made on his
interviewers: “Monsignor O’Grady made a very poor impression on us. He
is very old and rather senile at times… It beats us how he holds down
such a job.”

The revelation, meanwhile, that the Catholic Charities may not have
been all they were cracked up to be came as a “blow… (as) all our
adoption arrangements centred around the recommendations of the
branches”.

Again, the embarrassment involved for the Department appears to have
been the major concern for the relevant officials, rather than the
plight of the children involved:

While I do not wish to suggest that there was anything in the
nature of mass irregularities under the old regime, it was disturbing
for us to find that any loophole existed, especially since there is
persistent public criticism in this country of these adoptions, most of
it admittedly emanating from ‘wild’ reports in the cheap Sunday English
papers.

The Department’s response to the scandal was perhaps a little
restrained to put it mildly by modern standards – it simply decreed that
from that time no recommendations would be accepted from the Catholic
Charities… unless the recommending branch was licensed and approved as a
child-placing agency by local State authorities in the US.

And from there?

We are not really desperately interested since our new regime removes our earlier total dependence on the organisation.

Russell, who was unable to have children of her own, had publicly
expressed her interest in adopting an Irish baby boy at that time (to
accompany the baby girl she had already taken custody of).

She
subsequently brought baby Thomas Kavanagh, a son of Irish parents, from
his home in London to the US with his parents’ consent, on condition
that the boy would live in loving circumstances and be given an
education.

The actress’ desire to adopt in Ireland had been widely reported
across the world (and most especially in Britain) in advance of her
arrival – indeed one report in the Irish Times on 30 October 1951
carried a statement from the Church of Ireland Moral Welfare
Organisation saying that Russell “would be most ill-advised to come here
expecting to be able to adopt a child by just asking for one”.

But Russell did not come to Ireland. She went to London instead.

The baby (who was offered to Russell by his mother upon the actress’
arrival in London, her visit and its purpose having been well-flagged in
advance) was granted a passport by the Irish embassy in London on 6
November 1951. Dublin did not become appraised of the nature of this
passport until some days after the child had travelled to the US.

An internal memo prepared for then External Affairs Minister Frank
Aiken of Fianna Fáil in the immediate aftermath of the infamous adoption
seems to suggest that as far as Ireland was concerned, the entire
affair was a “publicity stunt” on behalf of Russell, given that one of
her agents (who had stood guarantor for the baby’s passport application)
had informed the Irish passport office that Russell “was not adopting the child”).

Bar the granting of a passport, the affair happened mostly on the
UK’s watch. Legislation introduced in Britain in 1950 forbade this
manner of adoption, so the reason given for the child’s journey was a
three-month “holiday”, as Home Secretary Sir Maxwell Fyfe told the House
of Commons on 15 November, nine days after the ‘adoption’.

From an Irish point of view there was nothing more that could be done
once the passport had been granted, for “the strict rules applicable in
such cases (in the UK) were complied with” (it should be noted that,
unlike the vast majority of American adoptions of Irish children during
this period, the child in question was not born outside wedlock).

Aside from the issuance of an Irish passport, the Jane Russell
situation bore little resemblance to the majority of these adoptions
from Ireland as the child in question had been removed from the UK (a
country which at least had adoption regulations in place, even if they
were easy to circumvent) rather than Ireland, was born through wedlock,
and had not been resident in a religious institution.

Ireland had no such adoption regulations in the early 1950s. Many of
the adoptions thus secured were those of US armed forces servicemen
serving in the UK, who were looking to bring a child home to the US with
them.

A civil servant from External Affairs explains the Department’s powerlessness to interfere in a memo dating from December 1951:

“… (British) make it an offence to bring a child in such
circumstances out of Great Britain. Here there is no offence unless the
child were being abducted.”

Put simply, at that time an American citizen had only to secure a
passport (which was easily done) for the child they wished to adopt in
order to claim them.

The flaws in this approach seem to have finally hit home with the
Department in the aftermath of the Russell case, although the key issue
for officials appears to have been the problem of self-preservation.Fundamentally, the problem was not that such adoptions were
necessarily wrong, or even immoral, but that should an infant end up in
disadvantageous circumstances (such as being sold on the black market)
in the US the Department of External Affairs would be held responsible,
as a note between Dublin and London from January 1952 shows:

“You will remember that in the Jane Russell case the papers were also
in order, even more so in order perhaps, and yet that did not keep us
out of trouble.”

…It is we who give the passport without which the child cannot
travel to the USA. Now, while the consents to which you refer are quite
alright, supposing it happened that the child was surrendered to persons
who, on arrival in the USA, proceeded to sell it off to the highest
bidder, with consequent press publicity etc. It is we who would be held
responsible.

I have taken an extreme case for my example but the fact is that,
if any child who left this country for adoption in America figured in an
unsavoury press campaign, racket or other exposure, it is this
Department that would face the music.

The rather blasé language used to describe this process is further
depressingly illustrated in the same memo when the civil servant in
question describes the futility of obtaining an undertaking that an
adopted child should never become a public charge:

There is no danger that such a child would ever become a public
charge; it would simply be sold or surrendered to another couple.

‘No ‘colour’ problem’

The sheer otherworldliness of the atmosphere surrounding these adoptions is perhaps summed up in the following exchange however.

The political nature of the adoptions is detailed on more than one occasion in the released documents.

A Consul General in New York wrote to an Irish civil servant in
August 1951 suggesting that the goodwill of the American parents in such
cases might be harnessed to foster anti-partition sentiment in Ireland.

That suggestion was shot down in no uncertain terms:

“With regard to the final paragraph of your minute of 6 June, we are
not impressed with the possibility of retaining the sympathy or goodwill
of intending foster parents for anti-partition purposes, as we feel
that the great majority of them have no connections with this country
and that they simply look to Ireland to obtain children for adoption
because the ‘demand’ in the US for children far exceeds the ‘supply’ and
adoption matters are not as yet regulated by law here (Ireland’s first
adoption bill was introduced in 1952),” the response reads.

Rather disturbingly, the guaranteed ‘whiteness’ of the Irish children
in question appears to be something of a selling point according to the
civil servant:

Moreover, there is no ‘colour’ problem here so that intending
foster parents in the US know that Irish children are ‘guaranteed’ in
that respect.